


Lee Stories

by dustjacket



Category: East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family, Family Feels, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, Male Friendship, Parents & Children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustjacket/pseuds/dustjacket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee always knew the Trasks would be the last family he served.</p><p>A collection of ficlets centered around <i>East of Eden's</i> Lee. Mainly domestic fluff with a little implied Adam/Lee if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Train Tracks and Photographs

He had set out with all intention of course, though it had been hard to face the twin’s lack of interest in his departure. It would have been nice to see a good-bye smile, a hug, but he hadn’t really expected more. Really, Adam’s bewildered desperation was the hardest part. Unwanted regret was hazing Lee’s resolution; he squared his shoulders, shifting from foot to foot in the crowded train station. The twins would be fine so long as Adam remembered to feed them. The house would fall apart at first but he was sure that when Adam hired someone else...Lee mind went to a loose seam in one of Adam’s shirts. He had forgotten to mend it and it was sure to go unnoticed. A shrill whistle sounded as the train pulled in.

“Express to San Francisco leaving in ten minutes! Boarding now!”

Lee settled on a hard third-class bench between an old man and pale girl with rough hands. A family had piled onto the seat across; tanned and calloused father, old-beyond-her-years mother, a handful of grubby children clinging to skirts and hands. Lee sighed there was no denying that he would feel some nostalgia for his life here with the Trasks. He had grown too comfortable in it: memorizing the marks on the counter tops in his kitchen, oiling the doors that stuck, identifying the floorboards that creaked under tiptoes. He had seen the twins shaping into the men they would become, the joyous madness within Aron and the stormy passion in Cal. He had learned how to nurse a man back to health, how to mourn the death of a friend, and how to hate a woman he only knew for a few brief months...Lee set his jaw and withdrew a book from his basket, fanning the pages as the train lurched into motion. A small photograph tumbled out into his lap. He knew the print well, a framed version hung in the sitting room back at the house.

\--

They sat for the photograph a few weeks after they moved into Salinas. Adam sat outside chatting with the photographer while Lee attempted to get the twins into semi-decent condition while simultaneously boiling potatoes for dinner. Aron had loose stockings around his knees and Cal’s hair was a mess of cowlicks. Lee inspected them with a critical eye as he checked a potato with a fork; there wasn’t much else he could do at this point. Putting a lid on the simmering pot, he herded the twins out of the kitchen and onto the porch. Lee noticed a smudge above Aron’s eyebrow and scrubbed at the grumbling boy’s face with a wetted finger. Satisfied with the result, Lee turned to leave. There was a cough behind him and a tug on the hem of his pants, and he turned to see Adam’s confused face looking up at him from his seat on the wooden steps.

“Where are you going Lee?”

“...I need to make dinner Ada– Mister Trask.” Lee leaned in closer to whisper, watching the bored photographer from the corner of his eye, “What do you need me here for?”

“Well you’re in it too!” Adam tugged Lee down beside him, “Now hold still,” a quick glare towards the twins “It’ll blur if we fidget.”

“Adam...” Lee trailed off.

“Ha! At a loss for words for once!” Adam grinned, “Don’t you go thinking you aren’t family.” Lee gave a weak smile and his mind went for a moment to the potatoes on the stove. They would boil over, in all likelihood.

The photographer puffed on a cigarette stub, “I ain’t got all day folks!”

“Yes, yes! Cal! Aron! Sit still! Everyone smile now.”

\--

The prints arrived a week later. Cowlicks, loose stockings, and bewildered smile preserved in silver nitrate. Lee had taken one of the smaller prints but had never found the time to frame it.

Lee felt something wet sliding down his cheek as the train gained speed. He wiped his face and stared at the inexplicable tear on his fingertip. He was not supposed to feel this way. Cal, Aron, and Adam should have joined the procession of families he had served over the years, a sequence culminating in his bookshop, his own life, his own home. Panic rose in his throat as the California hills sped by. Somehow, he had come to love the Trasks. He loved Aron and Cal’s eternal bickering, the maternal trust they placed in him, their moments of quiet affection. He could not stand the thought of anyone else making their food, tucking them into bed, treating their cuts and scratches, or watching them stumble through adolescence and grow into men. Lee’s fists tightened as he stared at the other face in the photograph. The familiar smile and tired eyes he had seen every day for the past ten years and knew as well as the lines on the back of his hands. Adam, who stirred in Lee dark emotions he had avoided with moderate success for years. Lee had known since the night that he fished a bullet out of Adam's shoulder and scrubbed the blood from the floorboards that the Trasks would be the last family he would serve. He had watched Adam recover from the deep wound Cathy left, regain strength and fortitude as the twins grew. All the while Lee had tried to stay uninvolved, to keep his focus on a future that was his own. But he had not been able to stop the strange connection he and Adam developed; a relationship with depths neither could define nor acknowledge. The specters of Samuel, Charles, and Cathy hung over the both of them, but still Lee loved that confused, wonderful, broken-hearted man.

“Damn it all!” Lee muttered under his breath and slammed his book shut, startling the passengers on either side of him. It wouldn’t do to walk back in the door less than an hour after he left. It was time for him to be putting down roots and holding fast to his new family, that much was clear, but he had to have some sense of closure with what he thought his life was going to be for the past two decades. Perhaps he should consult his family in the city. Perhaps he should take a day to stare out at the San Francisco Bay and wonder at what his life had become...

Perhaps he should give Adam a good dose of perspective on child rearing.

Lee returned the book and photograph to the basket, leaning back into the hard wooden bench with fingers laced on his lap and a smile on his face. The sea outside his window was smooth as glass and blue as heaven and Lee had a family waiting for him.


	2. What's Your Name?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any crits are welcome!

It was a quiet fall day, and Lee was making a pie in the kitchen. A few weeks had elapsed since he had returned from San Francisco, vague bookshop visions having dissolved before the train passed Santa Cruz. The back door slammed open and the sound of tramping feet heralded the twins in. Well, one at least. Cal burst into the kitchen, pant legs coated with dirt and a new hole in the knee of his stocking. Lee sighed to himself; he would have to mend that later.

“Hey Lee. Whatcha making?”

“Don’t even look at the pie. It’s for dessert tonight. If you’re hungry get an apple from the pantry.” Cal sulked over to the cupboard and retrieved a bruised apple. His attempts to clean it on his pants only left the apple dirtier. Lee took the apple with a distracted air and wiped it with a dishtowel before handing it back.

“You should go wash up Cal, dinner will be in a few hours.”

“Mhmh.” Cal grunted through the mouthful of apple. He swallowed and looked at the apple with an air of distaste. “Lee, I’ve got a question for you.”

“If it’s about the slingshot the answer is no, you’re not getting it back. That poor cat is traumatized enough as it is.”

“Nah, not about that. I was wondering...” Cal’s words sounded stilted and rehearsed, like he was repeating them from memory, “...what is your real name?”

Lee was too stunned to answer for a moment, “...What?”

“Your name can’t just be _Lee_ , so what is it really?” Cal took a thoughtful bite of his apple. Lee paused and contemplated the boy, who was already distracted by a game of kick-the-can outside the window.

Lee rubbed his temples and turned towards the doorway that led into the hall. “Go tell your father that if he wants to know something, he should _ask me himself_.” Adam appeared a few seconds later, looking sulky. Lee turned towards a cowed Cal.

“Just go outside Cal, I’ll take care of the apple.” The boy was gone in a flash of dust and untucked shirttails. Lee cut off the bit section of the apple and popped it in his mouth, incorporating the remainder into his pie filling. Adam coughed.

“How did you know?”

“First mistake was using Cal,” said Lee, through a mouthful of apple. “I might have fallen for Aron but Cal has as much interest in my name as he does in my copy of _Aurelius_.” Lee turned towards Adam, “I also heard the floorboards creaking in the hallway. Do you want some coffee?”

“Damn, I knew I should have waited for Aron!” Adam collapsed into one of the wooden kitchen chairs. Lee wiped his hands and poured two cups from the pot he had taken to keeping warm though the day and sat down across from Adam at the narrow kitchen table, resting his elbows on the scarred wood.

“So why do you want to know my full name? You’ve never shown much of an interest before.”

“I...it’s for a document I’m writing.” Adam stared at his tin cup of coffee. Lee blinked.

“Adam, you dictate all your documents to me. I haven’t seen you write anything yourself for years.”

“It’s something private!”

“If my name’s going to be in it, I feel like I should know what it is!”

“Lee, I– I can’t–” Adam was alternating his gaze between the stove knobs, the pile of chopped apples, and his own right thumb.

“Can’t what, Adam?” Lee raised an eyebrow and took a sip of coffee. For a few moments they sat in silence, the Adam’s fingers nervously twitching on his cup.

“It’s for my goddamn will, allright!” Adam slapped his hand on the table, his cheeks reddening as he met Lee’s gaze.

“Since you came back for good...well, I’m rewriting my will, and you’re in it. But I need your full legal name.” Adam stared even harder into his coffee. Lee’s nerves were jangling, this had not been what he had expected.

“Adam...I don’t know what to say.”

“Maybe your name?” Adam’s sheepish grin was almost too much, Lee found himself wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.

“You aren’t obligated to give me anything Adam.”

“Don’t give me this bullshit again Lee. You’re family!” Adam looked more defiant now, “Most of the money’s going to the boys, but I’m...I’m leaving you as the main holder of the house. I’m also specifying that you’re to raise the boys if I pass away when they’re young. You can manage their money until they’re old enough and you won’t be kicked out of the house by any lawyers or anything.” Adam rubbed his left thumb against his cup, tracing small circles in the metal. “I want to make sure you’re safe too, after I’m gone.” Lee could feel a lump in his throat. Any bequeathments he had ever received from the families he served had always been in return for his “years of dedicated service.” This though, was different; this was the first time he was in a will as a family member. Adam was thinking about Lee’s safety and the safety of the two people they cared for most in the world. Lee smiled weakly.

“You always manage to surprise me Adam. I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

“So you’ll give me your name then?” Adam looked eager to change the subject, these emotional moments tended to uncover a turbulent tension neither wanted to delve into further. Lee laughed dissipating the thick air that seemed to be filling the kitchen.

“You won’t be able to spell it, I’ll have to write it down.”

“Try me.”

“It’s Lee Tak-Wah.”

“...Maybe you should write it down.” Lee retrieved a slip of paper and a pen.

“Duck-Wuh?” Adam looked hopeful.

Lee grimaced, “Your pronunciation is awful. Why do you want to know how to say it anyway?”

“It just feels odd to always call you Lee. You started calling me Adam a long time ago but you’ve always just been Lee.”

“You could just use my American name.” Lee passed the slip of paper to Adam.

“American name?”

“It’s becoming a more common custom, especially with more Chinese going to the universities. We need something the professors can pronounce when they take attendance. I haven’t used mine in years, but you can if you want.”

“What was it?”

“Seth. Seth Lee.” The name itself Lee did not mind, but it was attached to old memories that left a bad taste in his mouth. Both of his first names reminded him too much of the person he tried to be for so long and the past he had never wanted to accept.

“Seth.” Adam tested out the name, with more success this time. He thought for a moment, then shook his head and stood, tucking the slip of paper in his pocket. He leaned over and clapped a hand on Lee’s skinny shoulder.

“I think I’ll just stick to Lee for now, if you don’t mind too much. It seems to fit you more.” Lee smiled as he cleared the coffee cups from the table and turned back towards the pie.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.”


End file.
